Altercation Between Puppet Gangs Causes School To Shut Down

Posted by CANNASaver on Thursday, 30 December 2021 in Dispatches from the Highlands

A dark cloud hung over Cannatown School for Puppeteering this week, as the doors shuttered by authorities, have kept both pupils and the larger public at bay since last week’s annual Winter Showcase turned violent. Investigators are still trying to get to the bottom of a feud between two warring factions of puppets that came to a dramatic climax at the otherwise typically-serene performance.

Reports from some pupils say tensions have been growing among the factions for weeks--even within the factions themselves. Others say the school fostered an atmosphere of survival and dominance, pitting puppets against each other. A string of roller-pin assaults, kidnappings and other strange events had led some school officials to consider canceling the Showcase altogether.

There are two major gangs of puppets within the school, notably the Woodland Creatures, led by an old wolf-like puppet named Meatclaw, and a group of farmers and laborers organized by “Granny,” reformed witch, and aged matriarch of the village, who had campaigned for their allegiance in scouring the Woodland realm. 

Their homes burned and some members torn graphically apart, Woodland survivors, led by Meatclaw, vowed to destroy the village once and for all. Despite the well-orchestrated and rehearsed showcase of puppetry, Friday’s performance quickly veered off-script in the second act as a backstage fist-fight poured out from behind the curtain. 

Puppets began clobbering each other and cursing, all of them gripped by madness, despite protests of teachers and audience members screaming in terror.

In dramatic fashion, the two gang leaders met in a penultimate duel at the height of the uprising between the groups, sparring in front of the crowd, with mics blazing such that their soliloquies echoed throughout the performance hall. All eyes were glued on the two, as they grotesquely fought to the death -- Meatclaw, attempting to devour the Granny, who did her best to beat him senseless with baking utensils. 

In the end, both adversaries had perished before officials arrived. Granny had been nearly devoured whole, leaving only remnants of ragged wool garments. The wolf, likewise eventually died from internal bleeding, sobbing quietly to himself in his final moments, in what was described as “some of the most haunting melodrama in the history of puppetry.” Even more chilling, was that  the two foes were related, each donning an opposite hand of the same puppeteer. 

Officials are unsure if the school will reopen.

Cannascopes November 2021

Posted by CANNASaver on Wednesday, 01 December 2021 in Dispatches from the Highlands

Discover Your Fortune!

Aries - The first date would've gone well, if your allergy to bird-watching hadn't kicked in. 

Taurus - It’s cold outside, but then, it’s cold inside too. Because you spent the utility bill money on a satchel and it was totally worth it.

Gemini - Your landlord wasn't happy when you brought a cow in the house, so you probably shouldn't tell him it's stuck in the attic.  

Cancer - It was a night to remember at the opera. Nobody could figure out how you got on stage, much less, into that tiny leotard.

Leo - Eyes off your phone and pay more attention to life! Specifically, it's your turn to puff puff pass, and you're holding up the circle.

Virgo - The gravity in here is terrible, you'll think, before tumbling head-first into the trampoline with half-roasted blunt in hand. 

Libra - The leaf-blower bong was a nice weekend novelty, but you shouldn't have brought it along to ski.  

Scorpio - Nobody’s cried so much when they hurled before, but then, nobody’s eaten a party-sized Oreos that fast before. 

Sagittarius - The lady watching you at the gym isn't admiring your squats. She's considering calling you an ambulance. 

Capricorn - You’re not sure what "gimmicky charisma" your grandmother is talking about, but she sure holds it against you. 

Aquarius - As the zombie lunges to sink its jaws into your shoulder, you’ll realize it’s only an trenchcoat hanging on a mopstick. 

Pisces - As you snap out of your daze, you'll understand that this one joint is the only thing keeping you from yelling at everyone like Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop.

Scientists “Totally Stoked” that Cannabis Could Prevent Covid

Posted by CANNASaver on Thursday, 13 January 2022 in Dispatches from the Highlands

A team of Cannatown scientists is “totally stoked” about super-strong strains of cannabis they speculate could prevent or even treat Covid. In a recent study of ACE2 pathways, a “ton of dank nugs” showed some promise in doing something about the coronavirus, which would reflect, like, a major, unexpected medical advance, according to the Institute of Fancy Questions, formerly, the Institute of Higher Minds (formerly the Drum Circle of Whimsy-Butter Hill).

“At first it was like, ‘Woooah,’ and then it was like, ‘Whaaaat?’” said researcher Ida Smakit. “We’re all just like, so happy, so thankful.”

The results, though mostly-based on ripped banter and napkin sketches, indicate that strains high in diggity-dankness could like, block COVID-19 from doing stuff to host cells. The lead and egregiously-ripped researcher, Pinecone Harry, wrote that even a handful of blunts might even prevent Covid by, like 99 percent. “You gotta smake a ton for it to work,” he concluded in the report. “And then eat a whole platter of a ganj cookies, at minimum.”

“Our work here is pivotal” added Harry. “Anyone can just say ‘cannabis cures Covid.’ But we’re proving it.”

The study briefly mentions a need for more research--but if proven to fudge with the enzyme, the world could see a market rush not unlike those that led to toilet paper and Hydrocholoquine shortages. Preventative THC-packed products such as mouthwash and throat gargle had been proposed, but were quickly rejected after preliminary test subjects all insisted on swallowing the samples.

“Despite the various applications, the most important takeaway, is that not just any cannabis will do the trick,” reminded Smakit via telephone interview. “We’re talking rocket-out-of-the-universe nuggersh. We’re talking, white rabbit behind the looking glass grass, flower that’s so fire you float and wobble and puke rainbows all at the same time. To prevent Covid you literally have to go find the most potent stuff you’ve ever seen, and smake it or eat it all. All at once.” 

How will you know if it works? “All you can do is get blazed. Totally blazed to shreds. And then, if you don’t get sick, maybe it worked,” Smakit said. “At least, that’s the accepted conventional-approach to science these days.”

“We’ll miss you, Farnsworth”

Posted by CANNASaver on Monday, 17 January 2022 in Dispatches from the Highlands

Oh! Cannatown will miss ol’ Mr. Farnsworth! He died like he lived, in CannaTown. He spent his whole life here, made a name for himself, had a family, a business. The only thing left to remember now, is the uproarious manner of his passing.

Not once when Farnsworth met the president did he stop to think he’d be remembered some day as one of the only people ever to die in the same room as half-inflated hot air balloon and over 50 gallons of fresh custard. Not once as a 1st division quarterback, or during his many years in Congress, did the thought of 2,000 screeching, rabid gophers ever strike fear into his heart, not once did he view the massive locks of a canal transportation port with the gaze of a man who might see them as a last sight on this earth.

What a hero! In his first platinum album we saw some of the wisdom and charity that made him a household name, though it was his second album that seemed to predict the harrowing excavator injuries and brutal interactions with narwhals he would sustain before the end. Like an encyclopedia to the future, his poetry and journals also foretold of the clown attack, the mysterious swimming bunny sightings, the allergy to milk, and even the infamous confrontation with Alexzonder, a vengeful ambassador from Greece who spent much of his life trying destroy Farnsworth.

When we gaze at the ten-foot monument set to be raised in the town square, we must remember him for the good contributions to society, and not for all that stuff he supposedly did with the nacho cheese. RIP, you will be missed, Farnsworth.

Dudeflation Threatens Cannatown Broconomy

Posted by CANNASaver on Wednesday, 08 December 2021 in Dispatches from the Highlands

National dudeflation remains higher than anyone ever anticipated going into the holiday season. Cool dudeflation rose .420% in November, adjusted for seasonal swings but far worse than previous months, the Bureau of Boring Statistics reported Thursday. 

Rising prices on hats and VR’s contributed to at least half of the increase, while prices for mancave furnishings and subscription shaving kits also climbed. And an index that tracks new nuggersh prices roses 4.20% over the quarter, making the biggest jump since the middle ages. The increase in hoverboard costs, and earbuds, is also worrying, says economist Carol Lott. “People paid extra for inflatable hot tubs last year,” she wrote in a note. “To help, the government gradually phases in nuggersh increases over time. But it’s about to become a huge freakin’ source of dudeflation right here on Main Street.”

Stripping out live rosin and micro-fiber underwear costs--both which tend to be more volatile--prices rose 4.20% over the same period, the same rate as in September. But not everything in Cannatown got more expensive. Trolley tickets, for example, keep getting cheaper. The price index for fares dropped 75% over the last year. That’s not great for Trolleys, and it’s happening even though demand for bell-incessant, slow-moving, open-air travel is recovering from the worst of the pandemic, and largely, a century of irrelevance. So it goes.

"How did we get started on Trolleys?" asked Lott. "Oh yes, we were talking about our grandfathers. Sorry for the tangent."   

With the explosion of dudes and dude-related stuff, perhaps due to generational shift, today's broconomy is in a greater peril than it's ever been, and many wonder how long it will sustain under the pressure. 

"Soon we'll reach a tipping point as far as dudes go," said Lott. "We might fix labor shortages and growing expenses for materials -- but when it comes down to it, the broconomy depends on dudes bein' dudes."

History of the Air Jørgen

Posted by CANNASaver on Tuesday, 16 May 2023 in Dispatches from the Highlands

There’s a shoe making the rounds on talkshows and celebrity feet in a sort of revival lately, however, it’s not clear we ever really said goodbye. The Air Jørgen, nearing 40 years in existence, is back on top. At the time the shoe deal was signed in 1984, another badass brand of Træsko (Danish clogs) called Holm’s of Dark Night was considered the “Lord of Loafers” among the “cloggers,” a numerous class of unmarried peasants who took service with the forest-based farmers for room and board. At night they danced for small crowds that gathered. Their hierarchy and reputations within their circles depended on the very clogs they wore, often the Fynboe clogs of yore, made from fine Alder wood, with a proboscis point. They wished to catch up to their Welsh and Dutch counterparts in order to finally compete in EuroClog, the transcontinental dancing competition.

There was, however, one rookie clogger, Mikkel Jørgen, who’d come from the lowest parts of East Jutland, who some considered a prodigy. It was reportedly Jørgen’s dance instructor Daisy Falk who appealed to his mother when he originally turned down the licensing agreement with the shoe company Nielsen. The deal was great, one unheard of for a poor clogging farmhand, and Jørgen’s own father called him an idiot for not taking it and threw bong water all over him.

So Jørgen finally caved. Nielsen had just come out with this new technology, called Alder Soles, says Falk. “And so we were gonna call it the ‘Alder Jørgen’” says Falk but it just didn’t “roll off the tunge.” Until one day the company realized how gracefully Jørgen spun and kicked high with his clogs. And it just fit. “The Air Jørgen.”

When Nielsen signed the deal, they were thinking we’d be selling $300 kroner in a year,” recalls Falk. “But we sold $1,260 kroner.”

As legend has it, the cloggers, and more formally, The Feisty Fynboes, a locally incorporated group vying for the EuroClog qualification, actually banned the first Air Jørgens because of a rule concerning the snout and upward bend of the shoe, to conform with the fashion of the times. Jørgen was reportedly fined $4.20 for every performance in his banned clogs and Nielsen gladly paid every time, giddily high to capitalize on free publicity.

But when it comes to the Air Jørgen’s popularity, the rest is obvious history. The clog was a must-have shoe for lowkey, middle-class peasantry in the 80’s and 90’s and even had a few sales in Randers and Aarhus. It helped the clog more widely trickle into pop culture including early b-sides on Tv-2 albums. 

The Air Jørgen has seen several iterations since then, and yet the Air Jørgen 1 remains the iconic staple still found on the streets and in country houses of East Jutland. It’s also the subject of the latest film by Benjamin Aflecksen, in theaters now.

Cannascopes: Discover Your Fortune!

Posted by CANNASaver on Thursday, 25 April 2024 in Dispatches from the Highlands

The zodiac, demystified.

Aries - The whole world would be awestruck to know you’re wearing an Apple Vision Pro, except maybe the person you’re operating on. 

Taurus - It’s not the Star Trek jumpsuits disorienting your colleagues, but that thing where you cut out the fabric to expose your hairy pits.

Gemini - You can’t get high off one hit on a Sprite can just minutes before your sister’s big wedding, but dadgummit, you’re gonna try.

Cancer - You can finally admit it. David Bryne dancing makes you physically nauseous. 

Leo - Making out with a flag doesn’t necessarily mean you love that country, even if it did have your baby. 

Virgo - Well, lucky you, you’re apparently the only one in a zillion people who gets utterly and unexpectedly chubby on Ozempic.

Libra - As the spaceship floated over the fire hydrant, you were filled with wonder about how they got the water in that hydrant. 

Scorpio - As your blind date is pointing out between hurls, not everyone is a fan of your “natural odors.” 

Sagittarius - You will begin to develop gills from sitting too long in the inflatable hot tub.

Capricorn - Your best friend may be a giant brain in a tank, but at least there’s no way he can steal your wife and house this time. 

Aquarius - The Pantene Pro-V is really making a difference. Too bad you can’t show anyone your four-inch pubes.

Pisces - You almost fooled them, and you would’ve gotten away with egregious estate fraud, if you weren’t trying to sell a cardboard house.

Team at Barry's Big Blunts Eager to Figure Skate in Beijing Games

Posted by CANNASaver on Friday, 28 January 2022 in Dispatches from the Highlands

A group of sweaty, somewhat dirty men in flannel shirts gliding across the ice might not sound like gold-medal level entertainment, but a local group of commercial blunt-rollers are hoping to change that. After a year in training, the fine chaps at Barry's Big Blunts are ready to show off their graceful moves at the Winter Olympics, representing Cannatown in the synchronized skating competition in February.  

The group has skated competitively for years, but only this year exceeded International pool scores at preliminaries in Resinville and Spliffington Heights. The scores automatically qualified them for the championship appearance, which came as a surprise to the whole team, especially store manager and group leader, Spencer Franson. 

"This all started as an embarrassing hobby," he admits. "Only after Covid began did we started throwing Lutzes and Axels in the routine, practicing between rolls."

Group sponsor, proprietor and employer Barry Bluntsworth says he was not immediately sold on the competition, until his wife berated him upon his 50th birthday for not amounting to anything but rolling blunts. “I was stoned silly and up against the wall, so I pulled this one out of the bag,” he now claims. “I told her I had a figure skatin' team!” 

The team credits their victories to strong relationships built on mutual understandings and personal boundaries. “We don’t hold hands,” Franson explained. “We absolutely don’t talk about anyone’s feelings. Skatin’ and smakin’. That's all we do."

"And to be absolutely frank, nobody really likes skatin’, we just do it,” he added.

As Team Cannatown, the group is proud to compete for the gold, but say they are also pretty much in it for the "free airplane ride."

“It’s all still a little embarrassing,”Franson says, “but at least we ditched the leotard idea before things got too awkward.”

New Monorail Line Coming to Cannatown Hole

Posted by CANNASaver on Thursday, 03 February 2022 in Dispatches from the Highlands

After years of having to trudge through the miles in the mud, especially in chilling rain, Cannatown residents are investing new infrastructure dollars into a monorail for the Cannatown Hole, the gigantic expanse of exposed earth in the heart of the city. Planners say the “Brown” line will open for use around the start of digging season.

The service will hopefully solve the age-old problem facing diggers from amateurs to trained trail guides, who’ve lost many a boot in the thick and viscous topsoil. Although outfitters have tried for years to sell snowshoe-type muddin’ flippers to enthusiasts, those who dig in the hole often have decried the lack of traversible ground, and have routinely brought the issue before city council during rainy climes.

Avid diggers say they are relieved by the initiative. “I used to have to crawl through the muck just to get to my favorite ditch, that I went through a pair of pants every week,” says digging hobbyist Walt Peters. “I even tried a canoe once!”

Local blogger @CTDitchDigga hailed the rail line as the biggest thing to come to central Cannatown since the concession frenzy of the 70’s. “Boy do I miss those footlong hotdogs,” she wrote in a post, “but I can’t wait to rest my Dungarees on a freakin’ train after a hard day’s dig.” 

It isn’t the first attempt at a transportation system for the sodden crevasse. The city installed a bus route in the early 80s, only to lose three vehicles into “Big Pitty,” the giant central sinkhole, within three weeks of operation. An outfitter also launched a local Segway rental business during the early noughts, but the venture failed miserably and some people died. 

The Brown line will take and pick up passengers at the hole’s four corner stations, each named for a pioneer who perished digging the original hole. A fifth stop, to Big Pitty in the middle, will open later in the year when engineers can figure out how to reach the deep and fairly inaccessible chasm. According to the city website, specific hours of operation will begin each day “when Charlie wakes up,” and conclude “when it’s his dinner time.”

Although not technologically-advanced by any means, the stations are set to have barrels and lantern systems, outhouse plumbing, and up to 20 boot-scrapers on each platform. Patrons may bring their shovels and other implements of excavation, provided they bang them on the cement first. 

“Let’s face it,” says city planner Laura Barnes, “these trains are going to be filthy as hell.”

Carpenter Accidentally Becomes Expert Physicist

Posted by CANNASaver on Friday, 24 September 2021 in Dispatches from the Highlands

In high school shop class, Frank Donners often got high marks for accidental demonstration of subatomic principles such as gravity and polarity, through many falls and egregious misuse of large magnets. So it wasn’t completely surprising that the 34-year-old Bowlington man accidentally stumbled onto a major breakthrough in the study of light and electromagnetic waves, when, on a random whim, he figured out how to stop light beams in their tracks while sitting at his own garage workbench.

Even more interesting, the woodworker-cum-physicist was able to accomplish the feat with a mediocre 6-foot 2x4.

“The light is completely reduced to a shadow, we believe, due to the opacity of the wood,” he announced to peers in the science community via nonviral video last week. 

Donner says he was cheefing in his garage laboratory when he came across the strange behavior of certain light waves. “It was if they were suspended in beams, coming from my window, and in these beams I could see the actual floating light particles, especially moreso when I kicked up a bunch of sawdust into it.”

It was after a few piles of sawdust that he suddenly had an epiphany. Following his recovery from a terrible coughing spell, Donners managed to snag a nearby framing stud and affixed it to the workbench barclamp. Then, he sat back to observe the magic. Sure enough, the light, acting as a particle, could not bend, and was totally blocked by the lumber, creating a dark shadow on the ground. 

It was, appropriately, a ground-breaking moment.

“Matilda!” he yelled to his wife, over and over, until the whole family came to observe the phenomenon.

The discovery, which brought him acclaim and series of research grants, is now catalogued in his forthcoming book, “The Block of Light,” which immediately skyrocketed to the top 349,617 on Amazon.

Donners, a self-taught carpenter by trade, learned much of what he knows from studying social media outlets and his own intuition. Always drawn to the mysteries of the quantum universe, he is best known among friends for  "feats of science," such as "freezing light" by shining a flashlight into an ice-cube tray, and on one occasion, "holding a light particle" suspended in space, between two chopsticks while at the local Chinese buffet. Now, energized by his own momentum and growing recognition, Donners plans several successive experiments, such as testing whether a groundhog could see its shadow on groundhog’s day, by studying his ability to see his own shadow. 

"I think we all can agree there's gonna be a shadow," he says. "The question that haunts me, is why?"